PISCATAWAY — "The Final Countdown" is playing on the gym's overhead speakers, and Kyle Gurkovich, a boyish-looking but implausibly ripped eighth-grade math teacher, has just finished his one-thousand two-hundred and fourteenth pull-up of the day.

From 8 a.m. to 8 a.m., Gurkovich will do the same thing over and over – tippy-toes, grab the bar, heave chest skyward, crane chin, drop, repeat – and experience more pain than he has ever experienced in his life.

"You signed up for this, you dummy," Gurkovich was thinking to himself up there. "You wanted it, so here it is."

HERE IT IS, DUMMY

So is he going to make it?

Nicole Ossa and Geovanna Suarez, who are in his eighth-grade math class at Quibbletown Middle School in Piscataway, say yes. No question. They nod enthusiastically as they watch Gurkovich, at noon, rip down sets in multiples of four.

"He makes math fun," Geovanna says.

Nicole agrees: "He's, like, my favorite teacher."

Mr. Gurk is too far away to hear what Geovanna and Nicole are telling a reporter, but he shouts over to them, in between pull-ups: "Don't lie!"

"Shut up, Mr. Gurk," Geovanna shoots back with mock seriousness.

She adds, out of his earshot: "He understands us."

To do pull-ups for 24 hours straight – to hoist yourself up on a bar continuously during the time it takes for the earth to spin once on its axis – might seem outlandish, but students like Geovanna and Nicole are used to that sort of behavior from their popular teacher. When Gurkovich’s students drift off, he’s been known to draw all over his face with pen or dump a bottle of water on his head to get their attention. One day his students arrived in the morning to find a tent in the middle of the classroom. Gurkovich was inside, shaving. He wanted them to think he stayed there all night.

"He will do anything to get them to do anything," says his former Quibbletown colleague, Erin McCaffrey, who, like dozens of other friends and students, came by Retro Fitness to watch.

For example, he once squished a Rice Krispie treat under his shoe – out of the wrapper – and then ate it, McCaffrey says.

But... why?

"Because if someone is going to do that, aren't you going to do math?" McCaffrey says. "He's the kind of guy you want teaching your kids."

'BUT WHATEVER'

Gurkovich, who is 28, said before the event that he believed he could get to 5,500. A former long-distance swimmer at the University of Delaware who still coaches the sport, Gurkovich has experience in extreme, 24-hour fitness. He finished sixth out of 12,000 in a recent extreme Tough Mudder competition. To train for this competition, he told the school nurse at Quibbletown that he'd run 16 miles. He goes to the gym twice, sometimes three times a day.

In June, he claimed the world pull-up record when he did 4,182 of them in this same place – a pull-up rack tucked in a little alcove of Retro Fitness, flanked by two televisions. One television counts down the time, the other – connected to an iPad, which Gurkovich taps for every rep – counts up the pull-ups.

It had seemed relatively easy last time. He had to take a four-hour break because he didn’t have any Guinness-sanctioned witnesses in the wee hours, and his arms locked up when he tried to restart, but in 16 hours, he still made it to 4,182. Other attempts to set the record have led to hospitalizations. The record that Gurkovich broke, 4,030, was set by a former Navy SEAL.

This time, like last time, Gurkovich is raising money for pediatric cancer research. A childhood friend of his, Sean Hanna, died at the age of 20 from cancer. And a 14-year-old student at Quibbletown, Daniel Nols, died earlier this year after a battle with the disease.

This was Gurkovich's way of giving back.

Gurkovich estimates beforehand that he might break the record – 4,210 – by midnight. Midnight rolls around. The crowd has faded, and Gurkovich is still chipper but some things have happened.

"But whatever," he says with a shrug.

His upper body is in excruciating pain, for one. Also, he's only in the mid-3000s, behind pace for his goal. It was only in June that he first set the record. He's still suffering lingering effects from that attempt. This might have been too soon to try again.

"I think we can count out 5,000," his father says.

FEELS AWESOME

Mike Tufo is the only person in the room who knows what Gurkovich knows. More than a year ago, Tufo tried this same challenge. A Rutgers strength coach, he did 4,066 pull-ups in 24 hours, which would have beaten the previous record of 4,030.

But the chaps at Guinness took a look at the video and decided that his form was off on a few of his sets, so they reduced his tally, down to 4,018. All that work, 24 hours of pain, and he’s off the world record by a dozen.

Last time, in June, “he walked out of here with ice bags on his arms,” John says.

"He's crazy," John says, laughing. "He's just crazy."

It’s 1:29 a.m., 3,694 pull-ups. Now, he’s doing them two at a time, taking breaks to eat Cliff bars and bananas and use the men's room. But the judges are rejecting some of the pull-ups. His chin needs to clear the bar, and he needs to extend all the way down to the floor, and he can’t hit it every time.

He switches to one at a time, every 30 seconds.

A very fast 30 seconds.

“What? I have to go again?” he’s thinking up there in his Team Gurk cut-off and the lightning bolt shaved into the side of his head.

At one point, it’s looking bleak. The gym is almost silent. Gurkovich, who had been chatting with attendees most of the time, now has headphones in. He’s still on pace to hit the record if his body holds up. If.

“He shouldn’t have tried it again so soon,” John Gurkovich frets.

The pain, and those quick 30 seconds, and probably sleep deprivation, at one point nearly overwhelm him. He wipes his eyes, then puts his hand protectors back on, and rips down another pull-up.

He hits 4,000 at 4:30 a.m. After 4,000, they're pretty much all torture, Gurkovich says. And he still has 211 to go to reclaim the record, and he can hardly do one a minute. He was supposed to have blasted away the record by now, on his way to setting the bar even higher.

Every time his chin goes above the bar – 4,150, 4,151, 4,152 – he lets out a scream.

It’s the final countdown.

THE FINAL COUNTDOWN

At 4,185, John Gurkovich moves a can of Foster's beer – a nod to the Aussie whose record his son wants to claim – closer to his Gurkovich's line of sight. It's getting lighter outside. Nearing 7 in the morning, Gurkovich is close, but it looks like he could give in at any moment.

Lift, scream, rest. Suddenly 4,190 becomes 4,195 becomes 4,200.

It's looking good.

"He's gonna make it," John Gurkovich says. "We're not gonna let him not make it."

At 6:53 a.m., Gurkovich lifts his head above the bar for the four thousand two hundred and tenth time. 4,210. Raucous applause from the two dozen people there to watch, and then a short break, and then he does it again to unofficially reclaim the record: 4,211. By 8 a.m., he hits 4,234, and then is done.

It was definitely not what he had anticipated, but on Sunday, he’s feeling good about what happened, even if he’s not feeling good. When he goes back to work – it won’t be Monday, because he’ll be at the doctor – he has a lesson for his students. Sometimes, you have to adjust. Gurkovich mentions the Mike Tyson phrase: Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

“I think that really worked in this situation,” said Kyle Gurkovich, eighth-grade math teacher and world pull-up champ.